Carrot, Pepper and Orange soup

The past few months have taught me that whilst having good quality kitchen equipment certainly helps, and is preferential it is by no means essential. I am currently without my beloved saucepans and have been making do with just my large Meyer sauté and two inherited, very battered, wonky handled and missing lid saucepans. And a warped frying pan! Despite this I’ve made some pretty decent dishes and they certainly have not curbed my cooking! I do frequently now have to check before attempting something that I have the item actually here and not in a friends loft somewhere but overall things have worked out in the end!

This soup was really delicious and so warming on a cold wintery night! It was also a good use of odds and ends – the half an orange was leftover from another recipe, and it really lifted the soup from good to greatness without actually tasting of orange! The gentle spicing from the cumin, ginger and ground coriander made it complete.

Carrots are without a doubt my favourite vegetable since childhood, and about the only fresh vegetable other than onions I buy repeatedly! I love their bright colour, and also the fact the market tend to do a giant tub of them for a pound which lasts me about a month! They are such a versatile ingredient and I love experimenting with them and this soup made good use of them!

A sprinkle of some fresh herbs to make it pretty would have been nice but I loathe paying for the little packets and didn’t have any pots at the time…. Though on the fresh herb front I finally last weekend got round to planting my little set of Jamie Oliver herb tins I was given last Christmas, and in a few weeks from now, crossed fingers, the windowsill be alive with Chives, purple basil and oregano!

Not the prettiest of photos but the pretty bowl I 'inherited' helps to make up for it!

Serves 2-3 and reheats well
Easy

Ingredients

4 large carrots, diced
1 orange pepper, diced (am sure yellow or red would be fine here too!)
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp ground coriander
Pinch of ground ginger
1 knorr chicken stock pot
2 tsp flora cuisine or olive oil
S&p to taste
Hot water to cover

Heat the oil and saute the onion and garlic until softened without colouring too much. 

Add the pepper and fry for a further two minutes, stir in the carrot, spices and the stock cube/ pot, cover with boiling water by just under 1cm, cover with something suitable (a lid would be perfect here!) bring to the boil and then simmer gently for 25 minutes. 

Blitz with a hand blender or in a liquidiser, season with salt and pepper to taste.

Chocolate and Cheese...

When I first saw ‘Philadelphia with Cadbury’s chocolate’ advertised I must admit I was a rather intrigued by the whole chocolate and cheese combination, and wanted to try it mainly out of curiosity! Then by fate an email popped in my inbox a few days later offering the chance to try it! Obviously I quite happily took them up on the offer and within a couple of days er the tub was empty!

On its own, I found my tastebuds initially a little confused by the milky chocolate and cream cheese flavours together, I think you will either really get it or not at all! I am a closet Cadbury’s fan (shh) but would love to see a darker chocolate version! 

However when made up into a pudding of toasted sweet waffles and sliced strawberries it worked a treat! The slight tartness of the fruit offset the sweet chocolate/ cream cheese flavour perfectly and made for a winning combination. Better still dad seemed quite satisfied that this was his pudding! 

Whilst it did make a quick 'assembly job' style pudding, I am at heart a snack fiend and this is why I ran out of it so quickly! I adore biscuits and have to apply self control around them, in particular my weakness is dark chocolate digestives! However delicious as they are, they also figure at around 87 calories each! With my rough workings, you can swap:

One of these:

For two plain rice cakes (I have fallen in love with Tesco's organic brown ones!), topped with ' choccyphilly ' and topped with a sliced up strawberry for barely a few more calories! Win win I say! A perfect snack for that long time between lunch and dinnertime!  

For two of these!

Its available now to buy nationwide.

Many thanks To Karen at Golin Harris and Philadelphia

Food to cook when the cupboards are bare

I feel like my life consists of apologies at times but I wanted to let you know I have not vanished off the face of the earth! I am currently studying very hard, cooking not very much and as a result have run out of things interesting enough to write about! Roll on this time next week when the first lot are out of the way!

Following my recent move, the second in the last six months I have been rapidly downsizing my store cupboards, and have been very creative with using up odds and ends! How I ended up with around fifteen varieties of pasta I will never know! Fortunately most of the dishes I've made have been pretty successful, and I have a few quick meal ideas to share with you:

One of them was a surprisingly delicious pilaf kind of affair, started off with frying a little onion and mustard seeds, then adding very weeny bits of cauliflower that needed eating, some leftover cooked chicken, sultanas and rice, covered with stock and gently cooked until all absorbed, then went in the last of a bag of frozen peas and warmed through with a generous amount of fresh coriander. 

It is no doubt to go down in my history as one of those dishes that came out spectacularly well but I probably will never be able to recreate due to the fact things were thrown together with a silent prayer it would come out edible!

Next up was a really satisfying lunch consisting of cream cheese and olive stuffed mushrooms. At the time I had two gorgeously large field mushrooms leftover from another recipe, and not much else!

The filling was made from sliced green olives, aka the last 4 in the jar, mixed with the last tablespoon’s worth of soft cheese (I never waste anything!), stuffed into the mushrooms, topped with breadcrumbs (woohoo another tub dealt with it!) and then baked until all bubbly and golden.

They made for a great little lunch with salad and also gave a good send off to the last of the fridge contents!

Ham and Mushroom Omelette, Weight Watchers style

As previously promised in my semi-recent Weight Watchers posting, and in my other omelette post I have made my first recipe from the book. Well sort of anyway! As with most recipes I use, I tweaked it a little as to what I had in but the basic elements are the same, and it was really good! Adding water to eggs admittedly had my brain questioning slightly but I kept my faith and actually produced I think one of the nicest omelettes I’ve ever made. The fact it was also cooked in a rather battered inherited frying pan, on the ancient electric cooker that belongs to the property I’ve just moved into, was even more of a good surprise!

It made a perfect lunch, not too heavy and yet very satisfying. Definitely a keeper. The original recipe uses soft cheese but I only had some natural yoghurt to hand and sneaked in a tsp of grated cheese instead! Whilst cheese isn't sadly high up on the list of health foods, I use a coarse grater for small amounts and find a little goes a long way (nearly 18 months on I am still completely in love with my Jamie one!). Since making this one, I have made many an omelette using this method. They are a perfectly quick and light meal for one, and full of goodness.

Adapted from 'The Complete Kitchen' by Weight Watchers, which is available now to buy

Ham and Mushroom omelette

2 large eggs, whisked with 1 tbsp cold water and black pepper to taste
1 slice good quality ham, any visible fat removed and roughly chopped up
Spray cooking oil
2 Tbsp low fat plain yoghurt
1 tsp or so grated cheese
4 chestnut mushrooms, sliced thickly

Heat a frying pan, spray with oil and fry the mushrooms until cooked to your liking, transfer to a bowl and stir in the yoghurt and season with black pepper.

Spray a little more oil into the pan, add the beaten egg mixture and leave for around 20 seconds to set, gently scrape in the sides and level out, when the egg is almost set on top, sprinkle over the ham. 

Carry on cooking gently, spoon the mushroom mixture over half of the omelette, sprinkle over the cheese and carefully fold over the other half to form your omelette, transfer to a plate and serve with a nice green salad. And pickles if desired. I have a thing for pickled red cabbage!

Many thanks to Juliette at Shiny Red for the review copy.

Cake style choc chip cookies

What a miserable day its been outside! My plans to get fresh air (and a little retail therapy!) were scrapped when the rain started splattering across the car windscreen after picking up my eldest niece this morning, and she decided we should bake instead. I don't need much excuse to do a spot of baking and after a quick trip to get some more butter, then came the hard part - what to bake!

Alice suggested cookies. This is all good and well. Except for some reason I rarely make cookies, I am much more a cake kinda girl. There is also the slightly embarrassing fact I have not baked cookies in a long time, and didn't really fancy the perfectly edible ones that I've had previous success with. I'm not sure what it is with cookies, anything that requires resting in the fridge for x amount of hours puts me off. I am very much in the instant gratification camp of baking! And overall I really do like cake.

Whilst I am slightly sad to report that my cookbooks are also being decreased, I really do not have room or need for so many and in the process of selling a selection of them, fortunately however I had saved this particular 'Best ever Cookies' book from the 'to-go' pile and managed to find a cookie recipe in it which appealed to both of us, and more importantly could be whizzed up, baked and consumed with a lovely cup of tea in rapid time! It also helped that I had all the ingredients in my limited baking supplies cupboard (read that as shut the door quickly and hope it doesn't collapse on itself cupboard) So as the recipe worked, I guess it was fate to keep the book and will have to find room for it!

Our resulting cookies were whilst falling within the cookie camp, also reminded me more of a rock cake but softer kinda cookie, and are very moreish! They are quite soft but not so soft they fall apart, making them ideal for dunking! The texture inside is cakey like, I think the use of self-raising flour does give them quite a good lift and lightens their texture nicely.

I didn't have the full amount of chocolate to hand, so made do with a 100g bar of dark swiss chocolate bashed up, and a good handful of descicated coconut which worked really well with the flavours. 

Also I am still getting the hang of the new oven, our first two trays came out a little more suntanned than planned so I reduced the temperature by 10 degrees and shaved a minute off the cooking time, which worked perfectly. Your oven may well behave differently, I think mine is older than me...!

Makes 18-20

Oven 180-190 - see above!

115g soft butter (I used stork)

115g light muscovado sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla extract (or 1 tsp vanilla essence)

150g self raising flour

75g porridge oats

100g plain chocolate (book calls for 230g white and dark or choc chips)

4 heaped tbsp desiccated coconut

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla, beat well, sift in the flour (I actually have no sieve at the moment but fortunately didn't affect the recipe!) and fold in using a metal spoon, along with the oats and chocolate until mixed. 

Place dessert spoon sized blobs on lined baking trays, leaving a gap as they will spread out. Bake for 14 minutes or until golden brown and your kitchen smells delicious. Cool for a couple of minutes then transfer to a wire rack and resist the urge until cooled sufficiently enough not to burn yourself.

Tuna and Spinach Orzo bake

Whilst getting close to moving house last month, I was trying obviously not to buy any new stuff in and to work my way through the cupboards/ freezer/ fridge etc, and this bake was born! Once again this falls into *Note to self: Always write things down* section! I really should have learned by now that whilst planned dishes are lovely, impulse ones are frequently kitchen miracles!

At the time I had half a bag or so of quick cook orzo to use up, a few nuggets left of frozen spinach and a half a bag of grated cheese (I hate grating!) going spare….and half an hour later I sat down to this lovely, rather filling pasta bake, which also filled my lunch box for the next two days which is always a bonus! I did admittedly eat the leftovers cold but am sure would taste better heated up! 

As a result of it being a cupboard surprise dish, and not thinking it might actually be rather decent I didn’t really measure anything but basically boiled the orzo as per packet instructions (I.e lots of boiling salted water), added the spinach at the end until just thawed, bashed it around to separate, then drained well and transferred into a baking dish. 

Separately I brought to the boil a small pan of milk and vegetable stock, stirred in a little cornflour (slackened with water first) until thickened nicely, removed from the heat, added a tin of drained tuna chunks, s&p, poured over the orzo and mixed well. Then topped with a little grated cheese, a sprinkle of natural breadcrumbs (the last tbsp. or so in the tub!) and it went until a moderate grill until bubbling and golden brown.

Not the best of pictures but you get the idea!

Serve on its own or with a nice green salad. But being that theres already spinach in there I highly recommend garlic bread on the side!